Video Interview: Broadhop Helps to Overcome Congestion

While not everyone appreciates policy management, when it comes to mobile broadband use, the proper management can ensure service continuation. Broadhop is one company that is moving policy forward into the next generation.

To discuss this in more detail, William Diotte, President and CEO of Broadhop, visited the TMC media booth at CTIA (News - Alert) 2010 for an interview captured in full on this video (embedded below).

Diotte highlighted that the policy market has evolved over the last five years from policy 1.0 where the main focus was to control network resources, fair use, etc. to policy 2.0, which is focused on apps and service innovation. Broadhop is taking a unique position to enable apps and service providers to deploy quality services to end users.

In one example, smartphone use can ensure one area of a market becomes congested due to new devices and apps, which can overload network and capacity. In a 2.0 world, key elements are to detect congestion at the cell level in real-time and dissect users through user plans.

Communication can then be sent to users that they may be in a congested area, offering to let them upgrade their service for a specific time period to avoid interruption or a downgrade to the quality of the experience. Platinum users will receive a message that their service will not be impacted by congestion. All communications are delivered in real-time.

To determine congestion, Broadhop is in the core of the network within the data center. They pull information from all control points of the network and current environmental information. This allows service providers to create rules based on certain conditions and how they want to assign use to subscribers.

Customers can update their service for a day or multiple days and pay a little more to get better service while in a congested area. They could even upgrade for just an hour or just for the time of a phone call. The service becomes their own personal utility where they can change according to need.

What if everyone decided to upgrade all at once? There is only so much bandwidth so differentiation of services and users is essential. Some may be downgraded without choice. For those who choose to downgrade, they can get loyalty points that can be used later toward upgrades and other things to enhance the experience for users.

"We are essentially giving the users a remote control for their own user experience with the Broadhop application policy," said Diotte.

For more on Broadhop and how users can maximize their experience through Policy 2.0, check out this video in video in full:

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan's articles, please visit her columnist page.